What If
by BlueOrchid2
Summary: Oneshot. Fred and George try driving their father's Ford Anglia and end up in a ditch. With the car at the mechanic's, the Weasley boys can't go save Harry from the Dursleys, and tragic consequences ensue.


**Summary:** What would have happened if the Weasley's car was in disrepair the summer after Harry's first year at Hogwarts and the Weasley boys thus never came to free Harry?

Set after the end of Harry's first year at Hogwarts.

* * *

Harry was dying, he knew. True, it wasn't the first time that this happened to him, but he was quite sure that this time he wasn't going to survive. He was locked in Dudley's second bedroom, bars at the window and catflap at the door. At first, Petunia had let him out for bathroom breaks and shoved a plate of canned food through the cat flap, but lately she was starting to forget. He hadn't been able to get out of the gloomy, foul-smelling room for four days, and she had shoved a tin of tomato sauce through only twice. And no water, obviously.

When she had still let him go to the bathroom, and not in a smelly bucket in the corner –not that he had anymore liquids to spare in the last two days- he had drunk his fill from the bathroom tap, but now…

Harry looked around the room dispassionately, studiously avoiding Hedwig's covered cage. The owl hadn't made it, dying about a week after his birthday, and it hurt so much Harry couldn't even think about it.

At the beginning of the summer, up to his birthday, he had been a jumble of emotions, lamenting the fact that his friends hadn't written and that he was stuck with the Dursleys. Then, the Dobby-incident had occurred, and he had been locked in his room. It was now three weeks after, and his feelings were completely gone. He was simply indifferent. Maybe it was the bone-deep exhaustion and the starvation talking but, for once in his life, he just didn't care anymore.

* * *

Less than two days later, a number of silver instruments in the Hogwarts Headmaster's office thrilled one last time before falling ominously silent. Albus Dumbledore found them like this two hours later, and paled drastically, his legs giving way under him as he fell to the floor with unseeing, haunted eyes.

* * *

The news was released to the public two days later, along with the announcement of Albus Dumbledore's murder. It was told that the Headmaster had entered Hogwarts carrying Harry Potter's dead body, when he was seen by the Potions Master. Severus Snape gad collapsed in shock, and had to be dragged to the infirmary, where he was administered a Calming Draught by a sobbing Madam Pomfrey. Two hours later, the potion's effect wore off, along with all the mind-numbing grief, leaving only rage and hate in its wake. Severus Snape found Dumbledore in the Great Hall, speaking with Filius Flitwick, the only other faculty member present there at the time.

Without even a word, Snape whipped his wand out, managing to injure the Headmaster with the surprise attack. A duel started in earnest, and the two were soon locked into deathly combat. It didn't last long, and resulted in the Potions Master's demise. But, Snape was followed in death by the Headmaster two hours later, his extensive injuries not having been treated in time.

Filius Flitwick, Duelling Champion and one of the people who had begged Dumbledore to not let Harry go back to his relatives' house for the summer, later commented to the Aurors that he had been so surprised by the impromptu fight to the death in front of him that he had only managed to fire off a stunner. He didn't specify who he had stunned exactly, and no one thought to ask why he had decided to levitate the injured Headmaster all the way out of the castle's wards and then apparate him to St. Mungo's when there was a Mediwitch and a Floo connection readily available in the castle.

* * *

A week after the Daily Prophet reported the circumstances around Harry Potter's death, Sirius Black became the first person ever to successfully evade Azkaban.

Two days later the Dursley family, who no one in the Wizarding World had though to arrest for Harry Potter's murder, had been enjoying a relaxed, normal dinner, happy to be finally rid of the freak, when they where visited by a gaunt man, dressed in rags and with eyes shining with insanity.

A week later, the next door neighbour finally called the police, bothered by the horrid smell coming from Number Four. The police found themselves in front of one of the most gruesome crime scenes ever to be seen in England: blood and gore covered everything, having managed to splatter even up to the ceiling, and the three bodies were unrecognizable, having been torn practically to shreds.

In the next months in the Wizarding World, starting with one Remus Lupin, various well-known personages of the Light side, all suspected of having been part of the secretive Order of the Phoenix during the war against Voldemort, were murdered.

Sirius Black was finally caught in a trap set out by paranoid ex-Auror Alastor Moody, who had rigged it in case he didn't survive the encounter with the mass murderer. A shirtless and limping Black was thus hurriedly escorted to the Ministry to be Kissed, but not before a certain sneaky bug reporter managed to snap a photo of Black's unblemished left arm and the muttered phrase: "I did it for Harry."

The resulting scandal resulted in nation-wide protests and conflict, till the Ministry decided to question Crouch under Veritaserum. When it was found out that he had helped his son escape from prison and held him under the Imperius Curse for years, all his cases were re-examined and new trials scheduled. Due to the now flimsy evidence against them and the well paid solicitors, a huge number of Death Eaters, murders, thieves and petty crooks managed to get out of prison, and the Ministry actually paid repairs to the 'wrongly imprisoned' and offered free counselling with Mind Healers.

In St. Mungo's, the wing that catered to maladies of the mind was renamed 'Sirius Black ward', and the Black family name, though now extinct, was finally restored.

* * *

It was to a very different world from the one he last remembered in 1991 that Lord Voldemort rose again two years later. Malfoy was practically leading the country already, and the Light side had lost most of its important figureheads thanks to Black's revengeful killing spree. Oh well, if his plans for world domination were going to be easier than he first thought, who was he to look a gift horse in the mouth? And to think, that he had Potter to thank for all this... maybe he should commission a statue of the brat? Cackling evilly, Voldemort set out to do just that.

* * *

**A/N: **Yes, I know, it's sort of similar to 'My Revenge', only without the whole suicide theme. It's just that this Harry-dies concept just won't leave my brain. I mean, really, how realistic is it that Harry actually survives all that is thrown at him in the course of the 7 books? So yeah, I would have been disappointed if Rowling offed Harry, but this is fanfiction, so I can do whatever I want. *haughtily sticks nose in the air*


End file.
